Computer technology advances have allowed computers to assist people with many traditional tasks, and have also opened new possibilities. In particular, computers have become very useful for helping people communicate with each other. "Conferencing," also known as "conference messaging" or "messaging," is a general category of communication in which computers play a vital function by obtaining, transferring, and/or displaying messages.
Known conferencing systems have important advantages. Many allow an indefinite number of participants, with messages being circulated either to each participant in turn or to all participants at once. Most conferencing systems also allow the participants to be separated by great distances, because computers and networks carry the messages between participants.
However, known systems also have disadvantages related to complexity, inadequate security, unreliability, and difficult maintenance. To better understand both the advantages and the drawbacks of known systems, we first consider examples of known systems.
Conferencing communications can be grouped into synchronous communications and asynchronous communications.
Synchronous communications are generally real-time communications in which the participants interact at about the same time. Examples include video-conferencing and Internet chat rooms, but synchronous communications also use other combinations of video, still images, voice, and/or text.
Synchronous communication systems use computers to provide users with something like face-to-face interaction. For instance, a video-conferencing system may transmit full motion video and audio using computers and a network. People at separate locations can communicate with each other almost as if they were in the same room. With synchronous voice-only communications, the computer and the connection provide capabilities similar to those of a telephone system. A chat room is a synchronous text-only application in which two or more parties can communicate with each other by exchanging written messages. A user types a message, which promptly appears on the computer screens of the chat room participants.
Even though synchronous communications are increasingly used, most computer communications are still asynchronous. The basic core of asynchronous communications is electronic mail (email). Email is a convenient method of sharing information with one or more people when delays between the creation of a message and the creation of a reply to the message matter less than delays in face-to-face communication.
Email systems are similar to the postal system in that both use a "store and forward" delivery mechanism. A message is sent from place to place, being stored at each place until it can be routed to the next place, until the message arrives at its destination address. At the destination, the message is stored until it is opened and read. A reply can then be created and sent back. The reply is likewise stored and forwarded, but it does not necessarily travel back along the same route as the original message.
More elaborate conferencing systems, such as list servers and newsgroups, build on the basic email services. Newsgroups and bulletin boards allow a group of people to actively engage in an ongoing discussion in which messages are posted intermittently over days, weeks, or longer periods. Because email is asynchronous, the participants do not have to participate at the same time, and are not expected to do so.
Unfortunately, email and other conferencing systems are not always easy to use. Some systems, whether synchronous or asynchronous, provide such an extensive set of features and options that even a user who has broad experience using computers is required to undertake large amounts of training to properly use the features provided. Obtaining the desired behavior is especially hard when it requires specific parameters and/or flags in a textual command line. Merely making an interface graphical rather than textual does not help much if users must still choose from numerous icons and menu options. Sometimes the sheer number of possible actions (either graphical or textual) is overwhelming. In addition, different commands may interact in confusing ways. A computer can be very hard to use if the behavior of a given feature changes dramatically depending on settings specified elsewhere through a "preferences" or "options" feature or a configuration file.
Feature-packed conferencing systems present users with a bewildering array of choices at both the system and application levels. Graphical user interfaces based on point-and-click technology are now dominant at both levels, making it easier for options to proliferate. Tools such as windows, program managers, menu hierarchies, help agents, wizards, and searchable indexed help files make it easier to find information about the features but also encourage the proliferation of features. The resulting complexity makes it harder to learn and use conferencing systems.
Misunderstandings caused by complex interfaces can lead to serious mistakes, such as the accidental exposure of sensitive information. The need to protect sensitive information has increased as computers become repositories or transmission conduits in conferencing systems. Many interfaces still make sensitive information too vulnerable to unauthorized access.
Even in messaging applications which provide security features, sensitive information is vulnerable to sophisticated users who have the expertise to bypass application security features by using lower-level operating system commands. For example, some system interface shell programs restrict access according to the user identification entered, such as a password. But these shells are implemented as application processes whose execution can be terminated to gain access to the underlying system services. Once the underlying system services are exposed, sensitive information stored on the computer may be read, copied, modified, or destroyed. Moreover, termination of the application may go undetected until long after the damage has been done.
In addition to the concerns noted above, maintenance is often an issue in conferencing systems. Continual increases in computing capability and wider acceptance of computers encourage the continuous development of system and application software. The result is multiple generations of software programs. Software administration may include loading and installing specific versions of software on each computer in a conferencing system. The task of maintaining current or compatible versions of software applications can become overwhelming as the number of software products and associated releases continues to increase.
Thus, it would be an advance in the art to provide a conferencing system which contains a user interface that cannot be easily avoided to gain access to underlying system commands.
It would be a further advance to provide such a conferencing system interface which requires very little training to use.
It would be an additional advance to provide a system in which software updates can be performed automatically without requiring user input. Such a conferencing system is disclosed and claimed herein.